20 - Black Eagle Mystery by Geraldine Bonner

In the heart of New York, a corporate lawyer plunges eighteen stories from the ominously named Black Eagle Building. Police quickly rule it a suicide, but Molly Morgenthau Babbits, an audacious part-time detective, isnt so easily convinced. The deceased, Hollings Harland, was rumored to be involved in a covert organization controlling the copper market, and was on the brink of being exposed. Just before his death, Harland had a heated argument with the affluent Johnston Barker, another suspected member of the secretive organization. Could Harland have been considering defection? Or was there something more sinister at play? With the help of an insider at the Black Eagle, Molly dives headfirst into her own unofficial investigation, suspecting a foul play murder.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twenty of The Black Eagle Mystery. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Read by Mike overby Midland, Washington, dedicated to UNI. The

(00:21):
Black Eagle Mystery by Geraldine Bonner, Chapter twenty, Jack tells
the story. When I came down, she was waiting for me,
with a finger against her lips in a command for silence.
She turned and went along the passage to the door
from which I had seen her enter. I followed her, and,
catching up with her, as she placed her hand on

(00:43):
the knob, burst out, what is it? What does it mean?
Where's Bacha? In the name of Heaven? Tell me quickly
what has happened? I'll tell you in here, she said softly,
and opening the door, preceded me into the room. It
was evidently the dining room of the house. A round

(01:03):
table standing in the corner, a sideboard with glass and
china on it against the wall. A coal fire burned
in the grate, and the blinds were raised, showing the
dazzling glitter of the snow outside. It was warm and bright.
The one place in that sinister house that seemed to
have a human note about it. She passed round the
table to the fire, and, standing there, made a gesture

(01:26):
that swept the walls and unveiled windows. Last night, in
this room, I at last understood the tragedy in which
we've all been involved. I stood like a post, still
too bemused to have any questions ready. There were too
many to ask. It was like a sky and so tangled.
There was no loose thread to start with. Did ye know,

(01:47):
Holland would hear when you came? Was what I finally said.
She nodded. I suspected it on Sunday afternoon. I was
certain of it on Sunday night, before I left New York.
She dropped it into a chair by the fire and
pointed me to one near by at the table. Sit
down and let me tell it to you as it
happened to me, my side of it. When you've heard that,

(02:09):
you can read the statement he gave. Then you'll see
it all straight from the beginning to its awful end. Here.
Last night, before she began, I told her of our
interview with missus Whitehall, and that we knew her true
relationship to bark Her. She seemed relieved and asked if
her mother had also told us of her position with
regard to Harland. When she saw how fully we'd been informed,

(02:33):
she gave a deep sigh and said, now you can
understand why I prevaricated that day in mister Whitney's office.
I was trying to shield my father, to help him
any way I could. Oh, if i'd known the truth then,
or you had the truth, you don't know even yet.
It was Johnston Barker that was murdered, and Hallings Harland
who murdered him. I started forward, but she raised a

(02:56):
silencing hand, her voice shaken and pleading, don't please say anything.
Let me go on in my own way. It's so
hard to tell. She dropped the hand to its fellow and,
holding them tight clenched in her lap, said slowly, if
my mother told you of that conversation I had with

(03:16):
mister Harland, you know what I discovered then That he
loved me. I never suspected it before, but when he
pressed me with questions about Johnston Barker, so unlike himself,
vehement and excited, I understood and was sorry for him.
I told him as much as I could then explained
my feeling for the man he was jealous of, without

(03:38):
telling my relationship, said how I respected and trusted him,
what any girl might say of her father. He seemed relieved,
but went on to ask if mister Barker and I
were not interested in some scheme, some undertaking of a
secret nature. That frightened me. It sounded as if he
had found out about us, had been told something by
some one. Taken by surprise, I answered with a half

(04:01):
truth that mister Barker had a plan on foot for
my welfare, that he wanted to help me and my
mother to a better financial position, but that I was
not yet at liberty to tell what it was. I
saw he thought, I'm at business, and as I go on,
you'll see how that information gave him the confidence to
do what he did later. I know now that the
Whitney office discovered I had had a letter from mister

(04:23):
Barker mailed from Toronto asking me to join him here,
and that I agreed to do so in a phone
message that same day. That letter, directed to my office,
was in typewriting and was signed with my father's initials.
It was short, merely telling me that there was a
reason for his disappearance, which he would explain to me
that his whereabouts must be kept secret, and that he

(04:45):
wanted me to come to him to make arrangements for
a new business venture in which he hoped to set
me up. As you know, I attempted to do what
he asked, and was followed by two men from the
Whitney office. How do you know all this? I couldn't
help budding in. She gave a slight smile, the first
I had seen on her face. I'll tell you that later.

(05:06):
It's not the least curious part of my story. Realizing
by the papers that there was a general hue and
cry for him, I was very cautious, much more so
than your detective's thought. I saw them, decided the move
was too dangerous, and came back. At that time, and
for some time afterward. I believed that letter was for
my father, wasn't it? She shook her head. No, But wait,

(05:31):
I had no other letter, and no other communication of
any sort. I searched the papers for any news of him,
thinking he might put something for me in the personal columns,
but there was not a sign. Days passed that way.
My business was closed, and I had time to think,
and the more I thought, the more strange and inexplicable
it seemed. Why in the letter had he made no

(05:55):
reference to the broken engagement so vital to the both
of us that night in the church. Why Hatty said
nothing about my mother, whose state of mind he would
have guessed. From the first I had suspicions that something
was wrong. I could not believe he would have done
what they said he had, even after I read in
the papers of his carefully planned to get away, I
was not convinced. After that scene in the Whitney office,

(06:18):
when I saw you were all watching me, eager to
trip me up into any admission, my suspicions grew stronger.
There was more than showed on the surface. I sensed it,
an instinct warned me. As days passed and I heard
nothing more from him, the conviction grew that something had
happened to him. If it was accident, I was certain
it would have been known. If, as many thought, he'd

(06:40):
lost his memory and straightway, I was equally certain he'd
have been seen and recognized. What else could it be?
Can't you picture me shut up with my poor distracted mother,
ravaged by fear and anxiety. Those waiting days, how terrible
they were, with the sense of dread always growing growing.
Finally it came to a climax. If my father was

(07:04):
dead as I thought, there was only one explanation, foul play.
On Friday, when you came to see me, I was
at the breaking point, afraid to speak, desperate for help,
and unable to ask for it. Now I come to
the day when I learned everything, when all these broken
forebodings of disaster fell together like the bits of glass

(07:26):
in a kaleidoscope and took a definite shape. It was Sunday.
Can it be only two days ago? My mother had
moved to the cottage, and I was alone in the apartment,
packing up to follow her. About the middle of the afternoon,
while I was hard at work, the telephone rang. I
answered it and was told by the operator long distance

(07:46):
was calling me Quebec. At that my heart gave a
great jump of joy and relief. My father was alive
in sending for me again. It was like the wireless
answer of help to a foundering that you know how
often the long distance connection varies. One day you can
recognize a voice a thousand miles off that on the
next you can't make out. At one hundred. The voice

(08:09):
that had spoken to me from Toronto was no more
than a vibration of the wire, thin and toneless. The
one that spoke from Quebec was distinct and colored with personality.
The first words were that it was j W B.
And at these words, as if the receiver had shot
an electric current into me, I started and grew tense,
for it did not sound like the voice of J. W. B.

(08:32):
It went on, explaining why he had not communicated with me,
and how he now again wanted me to come to him. I, listening,
became more and more sure that the person speaking was
not my father, but that, whoever he was, his voice
stirred a faint memory, was dimly suggestive of a voice
I did know. I was confused and agitated, standing there

(08:55):
with the receiver at my ear while those sentences ran
over the wire, every syllable clear, indistinct. Then suddenly I
thought of a way I could find out my father
was the only man in the world who knew of
our secret, of the plan for our reunion. A simple
question would test the knowledge of the person talking to me.
When he had finished, I said, I've been longing to

(09:17):
hear from you, not only for myself, but for my mother.
She's been in despair. There was a slight pause before
the voice answered, why should Missus Whitehall be so disturbed?
Then I knew it wasn't Johnston Barker. The reason for
Missus Whitehall's disturbance was as well known to him as
it was to me. Besides, in our talks together, he

(09:38):
had never alluded to her as Missus Whitehall, but always
as your mother or by her Christian name, Serena. I said,
the mystery of his disappearance had upset her. She was
afraid something had happened to him. A faint laugh, with
again that curiously familiar echo to it came along the wire.
You can set her mind at rest after you've seen me.

(09:59):
There was something ghastly about it, talking to this unknown being,
listening to that whispering voice that called me to come,
and wasn't the voice. I knew it was like an
evil spirit close to me, but invisible, and that I
had no power to lay hold of. While I was
thinking this, he was telling me that he had a
safe hiding place and that I must join him at once.

(10:22):
The plans were now perfected for the new enterprise in
which he was to launch me. I demurred, and, to
gain time, told him how I'd tried to go before
and been followed. That caught his attention at once. His
questions came quick and eager. Perhaps before that he had
tried to disguise his voice anyway, Now that familiar note
in it grew stronger. I began to catch it, something, inflections, accent,

(10:46):
till suddenly, like a runner who rounds a corner and
sees his goal unexpectedly before him, my memory saw a name, Harland.
I was so amazed, so staggered that for a moment
I couldn't speak. Voice brought me back, saying, sharply, are
you there. I stammered a reply and said I couldn't
make up my mind to come. He urged, but I

(11:07):
wouldn't promise till at length. Feeling I might betray myself,
I said I'd think it over and let him know later.
He had to be satisfied with that, and gave me
his telephone number, telling me to call him up as
soon as I decided. What did I feel as I
sat alone in that dismantled place, Can you realize the
state of my thoughts. What did it mean? What was

(11:28):
going on? The man was not Johnston Barker, But how
could he be Harland who was dead and buried. Ah,
if you had come then instead of Friday, I'd have
told you, for I was in waters too deep for me.
All that I could grasp was that I was in
the midst of something incomprehensible and terrible, from the darkness
of which one thought stood out. My father had never

(11:50):
sent for me, I had never heard from him. It
had been this other man all along. I was then
as certain as if his spirit had appeared before me,
that Johnston Barker was dead. And now I come to
one of the strangest and finest things that ever happened
to me in my life. Late on Sunday night, a
girl unknown to me and refusing to give her name,

(12:12):
came and told me of the murder, the whole of it,
the evidence against me, and that I stood in danger
of immediate arrest. I jumped to my feet. I couldn't
believe it. A girl, what kind of girl? Young and
pretty with dark brown eyes and brown curly hair. Oh,
I can place her for you. She said she had
been employed to help get the information against me and

(12:33):
my father, and was the only woman acting in that capacity. Mollie,
I gasped, falling back into my chair. Molly babbits, what
in Heaven's name your right to invoke Heaven's name? For
it was Heaven that sent her. She wouldn't tell me
who she was or why she came, but I could
see what reason could there have been except that she

(12:55):
believed me innocent and wanted to help me escape. For
a moment, I couldn't speak. I dropped my head, and a
silent oath went up from me to hold Molly's sacred forevermore.
I could see it all. She'd found her heart, realized
the cruelty of what was to be done, discovered in
some way, she had given me wrong information and done
the thing herself, the gallant, noble, little soul. God bless her,

(13:19):
God bless her. Carol went on. I wonder now what
she thought of me. I must have appeared utterly extraordinary
to her. She thought she was telling me what I
already knew, or at least knew something of. But as
I sat there listening to her, I was piecing together
in my mind what she was saying with what I
myself had found out. I was building up a complete story,

(13:42):
fitting new and old together, and it held me dumb, motionless,
as if I didn't care. It would take too long
to tell you how I got to the main facts,
the smaller points I didn't think of. It was as
if what she said and what I knew jumped toward
each other, like a flame, and the igniting gas connecting
the broken bits into a continuous line of fire. I

(14:05):
knew that murder had been committed. I knew that the
body was unrecognizable. I knew that had my father been living,
I would have heard from him. I knew that the
voice on the phone was Harlan's. Without all the details
she gave me, it would have been enough. Before she
had finished, my mind had grasped the truth. It was
Johnston Barker who had been murdered, and Harland, trying now

(14:28):
to draw me to him, was the murderer. Do you
guess what a flame of rage burst up in me?
What a passion to trap and bring to justice the
man who would conceive and execute such devilish thing. I
could hardly wait to go. I was too wrought up
to think out of reasonable course. Looking back on it today,
it seems like an act of madness, but I suppose

(14:49):
a person in that state is half mad. I never
thought of getting anybody to go with me, of applying
to the police. I only saw myself finding Harland and
accusing him. Conceivable the irrational action of a woman beside
herself with grief and fury. I called up the number
he'd given me and told him I was coming on
the first train I could catch. He told me at

(15:11):
what hour that morning you would leave New York and
when it would reach Quebec. He said he would send
his servant, a frenchwoman, to meet me at the depot,
as he didn't like to risk going himself. Then I
left the house and went to the Grand Central Station,
where I sat in the women's waiting room for the
rest of the night. I did not get to Quebec

(15:31):
till after midnight. The servant met me, put me in
a sleigh that was waiting for us, and together we
drove here. The house was lit up, every lower window bright.
As we walked up the path from the gate, I
saw a man moving behind the shrubbery and called her
attention to him. While she was opening the door with
her key, I noticed another loitering along the footpath by

(15:52):
the gate, obviously watching us. This time I asked her
why there should be men about at such an hour
and on such a freezing night. She seemed bewildered and frightened,
muttering something in French about having noticed them. When she
went out in the hallway, she directed me to a
room on the upper floor, telling me when I was
ready to go down to the dining room, where supper
was waiting. I went upstairs, and she followed, showing me

(16:15):
where I was to go, and then walking down the
passage to another room. As I took off my wraps
and hat, I could hear a voice, loud and excited,
telling some one of the two men we had seen.
Another voice answered it a man's, but pitched too low
for me to make out the words. When I was ready,
I went downstairs and into the room. No one was about.

(16:36):
There was not a sound. The fire was burning as
it is now, the curtains drawn, and the table set
out with a supper, was brightly lit with candles and
decorated with flowers. I stood here by the fire, waiting, white,
I suppose as the tablecloth, for I was at the
highest climax of excitement a human being can reach and
keep her senses. Suddenly I heard steps on the stairs.

(16:59):
I turned and made ready, moistening my lips, which were
stiff and felt like leather. The steps came down the passage,
the door opened. There he was that first second when
he entered, as the lover and Conqueror. He looked splendid.
The worn and harassed air he had the last time
I'd seen him was gone. He was at the highest

(17:22):
pinnacle of his life, the very butt and sea mark
of his sail, and it was as if his spirit
recognized it and flashed up in the last illuminating glow
of fire and force. He was prepared for amazement, horror,
probably fear from me. The first shock he received was
my face showing none of these quiet, and I suppose

(17:43):
fierce with the hatred I felt. He stopped dead in
the doorway, the confidence stricken out of him, just staring.
Then he stammered, Carol, you you He was too astound
it the same more I finished for him, my voice
low and horse. You think I didn't expect to see you,

(18:04):
I did. I knew you were here. I came to
find you. I came to tell you that I know
how you killed Johnston Barker. I don't think any one
has ever said he lacked courage. He was one of
those bold and ruthless beings that came to their fullest
flower during the Italian Renaissance. Terrible and tremendous too. I've

(18:25):
thought of him since as one of the Borges or Iago,
transplanted to our country in modern times. When he saw that,
I knew, he went white, but he stood with the
light of the candles bright on his ghastly face, straight
and steady as a soldier before the cannon. Johnston Barker,
he said, very quietly killed him. You bring me interesting news.

(18:48):
I didn't know he was dead. As I have told you,
I had come without plans, with no line of action
decided upon. Now the futility, the blind rashness of what
I had done was borne in upon me. His stony calm,
his measured voice, showed me I was pitted against an
antagonist whose strength was to mine as alliance to a mouse.
The thought maddened me. I was ready to say anything

(19:10):
to break him, to conquer and crush him. And in
my desperation, guided by some flash of intuition, I said
the right thing. Oh, don't waste time denying it. It's
too late for that. Now. It's not I alone who
knows it. They know in New York everything, how you
did it, how you stole away, where you are now,
the net is around you. They've got you. There's no

(19:34):
use any more in lies and tricks, for you can't
escape them. He had listened without a movement or a
sign of agitation. But when I finished, he straightened his shoulders, and,
throwing up his head, sent a glance of piercing question
over the curtained windows. His whole being suggested something arrested
and fiercely alert. Not fear, but a wild concentration of energy,

(19:57):
as if all his forces were aroused to meet a
desperate call. Then suddenly he made a step forward, leaned
across the table, and spoke, I can't tell you all,
he said. It was so horrible in his face, it
was like a demon and its death throes. But it
was about his love for me, that he'd done it
all from me, that he could give me more than

(20:20):
any woman ever had before, lay the world at my feet,
and to come with him. Now we could get away.
We had time. Yet she closed her eyes and shuddered
at the memory. I can't go on. He knew it
was hopeless. He must have known then what the men
outside meant. It was the last defiance, the last mad hope.

(20:45):
And then I conquered him, not as I'd meant to,
not with any intention. All the horror and loathing I
felt came out in what I said, terrible words, how
I hated him, all that had been locked up me
since I'd known the truth. His face grew so dreadful
that I shrank back into his corner, and finally to

(21:07):
hide it, hid my own in my hands. People do
such strange things in life, not at all like what
they do in books and plays. When I stopped speaking,
he said nothing, and dropping my hands, I looked at him,
not knowing what i'd see. He was standing very quiet,

(21:31):
gazing straight in front of him, like a man thinking, deeply, thinking,
lost in thought. We were that way for a moment,
so still you could hear the clock ticking. Then, without
a word or look at me, he turned and went
out of the room. I was so paralyzed by the
scene that for a space I stood where he'd left me,

(21:54):
squeezed into an angle behind the mantelpiece, stunned and senseless.
Then the sound of his feet the stairs called me
back to life. He was going, he was running away.
I did not know myself then who the men outside were,
and thought he could easily make his escape. I ran
out into the hall, calling to the frenchwoman. She came

(22:15):
out of a door somewhere in the back part of
the house, and I have a queer impression of her
face by the light of a bracket lamp, almost ludicrous,
and its expression of fright. As I ran up the stairs,
I screamed to her to come to follow me, and
heard her steps racing along the passage and her panting
exclamations of terror. At the stairhead, my ear caught the

(22:35):
snap of a closing door and the click of a
key turned in a lock. It came from the darkened
end of the hall, and as I ran down, I
cried to the woman, get someone, call, get help. Then
and there she threw up a window, and, thrusting out
her head, screamed into the darkness, ousucor, ousucor. A man's
voice close under the window answered her, and she flew

(22:57):
past me to another staircase beyond in the darkness down
which I could hear her clattering rush. Then there was
the sound of steps and the breaking of wood, sharp
tearing noises mixed with the shouts of men. It all
came together for as I stood outside that locked door,
listening to the woman's cries and the smashing of the

(23:18):
wood below, sharp as a flash, came the report of
a pistol from the closed room. That's all. I didn't
see him again. I couldn't the police, inspector. They've all
been very kind, have done everything for me. They could
let me see the statement. When you've read that, he'll
know everything. It'll be the last chapter. I can't tell

(23:41):
it to you. It's more than I can bear. She
glanced at me, and then suddenly looked away for tears,
quick and unexpected, welled into her eyes. She put up
one hand, pressing it against her eyelids, while the other
lay still on the table. I leaned forward and laid
mind over it. She sat speechless, struggling with her moment

(24:03):
of weakness. I looked at the two hands, mine, big
and hard and brown, almost hid hers, closing round it,
sheltering and guarding it as my life. If God willed,
it would close round and shelter and guard hers. I

(24:23):
am coming to the end of my part of the story,
and it's only up to me now to give the
final explanation furnished by Harland's statement of the strangest crime
that had ever come within the can of the Whitney Office.
We all read the statement that day and that night
in our sitting room at the Front and Neck, O'Malley,
Babbitts and I talked it over. A good deal had
to be supplemented by our own inside information. For anyone

(24:45):
who had not our fuller knowledge, there would have been
many broken links in the chain. But to us it
read as a clear consecutive sequence of events. One thing
I drew from it, almost as if Harland had told
me himself. Its unconscious revelation of the development in him
of sinister possibilities that had lain dormant during the struggle
of his early years. In middle life, his world conquered

(25:08):
two master passions, love of gain and love of women,
had seized him and swept him to his ruin. I
won't give it in his words, but in as plain
and short a narrative as I can. Harland had been
the welter in the copper Pool, and Barker had suspected him.
This was the immediate cause of the murder. Back of that,

(25:28):
the root from which this whole intricate crime grew was
his love of Carol Whitehall, in determination to make her
his wife, briefly outlined his position with regard to her
was as follows. His passion for her had started with
the inauguration of the land Company. But while she was
grateful and friendly, he soon saw that she was nothing more.
So he kept his counsel, making no attempt by word

(25:51):
or look to disturb the harmony of their relations. But
while he maintained the pose of a business partner, he
studied her. So while she was ambitious, large in her aims,
and aspiring, this side of her character was the one
he decided to lay sieged to. If he could not
win her heart, he would amass a fortune and tempt
her with its vast possibilities. His membership in the Copper

(26:15):
Pool gave him the opportunity, and he saw himself able
to lay millions at her feet. On January fifth, he
met Barker on the street, and in the course of
a short conversation, learned that the head of the Pool
suspected his treachery. That half exposed suspicion, with its veiled
hint of publicity, planted the seed of murder in his mind.

(26:36):
It was not, however, till two days later, that the
seed sprouted. How his idea came to him indicated the
condition of morbidly acute perception and wild recklessness. He had reached.
Walking up Fifth Avenue after dark, he had seen a
man standing under a lamp lighting a pipe. The man,
Joseph Sammis, was so like Barker that he moved nearer

(26:59):
to address him. A closer view showed him his mistake,
but also showed him that Samus, feeble in health, shabby
and impoverished, was sufficiently like Barker to pass for him.
From that resemblance, his idea expanded further. He followed Samus
to his lodgings, had a conference with him, and told
him he had work in Philadelphia which he wanted Samus

(27:21):
to undertake. The man down to his last dollar, flattered
and amazed at his good fortune, agreed at once. Though
the work had not developed, it was necessary for Samus
to be on the ground and stay there all waiting instructions.
Money was given him for proper clothes and in advance
of salary. The date when he was to leave would

(27:42):
be communicated to him within a few days. It would
appear that Samus never knew his benefactor's real name, but
accepted the luck that came to him eagerly and without question.
In his case, the chief had guessed right he was
a plant. From this point the plot mushroomed out into
its full dimensions. Harland and Barker were of a size, small,

(28:04):
light and wiry. Both men had gray hair and dark eyes.
The features obliterated clothes and personal papers and jewelry were
the only means of identification. The back office, with its
one egress through the other rooms, was selected as the
scene of the crime. Barker's body could be lowered from
the cleat, tried and tested to the floor below. Through

(28:27):
his acquaintance with Ford and Miss Whitehall, Harland was familiar
with the hours of the Azalewoods Estates people. They would
be gone when he went down, entered their office with
the past key he had procured, and made the change
of clothing with his victim. His own disguise was a
very simple matter. Through an acquaintance with actors in his youth,
he had learned their method of building up the nose

(28:48):
by means of an adhesive paste. That and the white
mustache were all he needed. He took one chance, and
one only, a gambler's risk, that the body might not
be sufficiently crushed to escape recognition. This chance, as we know,
went his way gone thus far. He had only to
wait his opportunity. Against that, he bought and concealed the rope,

(29:11):
the blackjack for the blow, and the articles for his
own transformation, all the properties of the grizzly drama he
was about to set stage. Meanwhile, his scheme to win
Carol was working out less successfully, and the strain was
wearing on him. On January fifteenth, his nerves stretched to
the breaking point. He went to her, determined to find
out how she stood with Barker. Her answer satisfied him.

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He knew her to be truthful, and when she told
him she had no other than a filial affection for
the magnate, he believed her. The information she gave about
Barker's intention of helping her, of having planned afoot for
her future welfare, he seized upon and subsequently used. He
also in that interview learned that she had had a
phone message from the Magnate saying he was coming to

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her office that afternoon and would later go to the
floor above to see mister Harland. When he heard this,
he knew that his time had come from her. He
went straight to a telephone booth called at Barker's garage
and gave Henny the instructions to meet him that night
and take him to the Elizabeth Depot. That done, he
returned to the Black Eagle building, saw that his stenographer

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and clerk were disposed to his satisfaction, and made ready
for the final event. The quarrel with Barker was genuine.
The head of the copper pool burst into accusations of
treachery and threatened immediate exposure. Sitting at the desk, engrossed
in his anger, he did not notice Harland slipped behind him.
One blow of the black jack, delivered below the temple,

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resulted in death, as instantaneous as it was noiseless. Fastening
the rope about the body, Harland swung it from the
cleat to the floor below, where in the darkness it
would have been invisible at the distance of ten feet.
He then passed through the outer offices and went downstairs.
He must have missed Carroll by a few seconds. His

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knock being unanswered, he let himself in with his pass
key and walked through to the back room. Here he
drew in the body and curtaining the window, turned on
the lights, and effected the change of clothes, shaving off
the mustache and looking for the scarf pin, which he
couldn't find. He had just completed this when Ford entered,

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a terrible moment for him. When Ford left, his nerve
was shaken, and he realized he must finish the job
at once. After he had done so, he went back
to the private office, carefully arranged his own disguise, and,
after waiting for over an hour, put on Barker's hat
and coat and went down the service stairs. He met
no person or obstacle, skirted the back of the block

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and picked up Henny at the place designated at the
Elizabeth station, he bought a ticket to Philadelphia, but when
he saw his chance, crossed the lines to the Jersey
Central platform and boarded a local for Jersey City, from which,
by a devious route, he made his way to Canada.
It was in the waiting room at Jersey City depot
that he removed his disguise. In Toronto, he sublet the

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small apartment, only going out at night and keeping a
close watch on the developments in New York, which he
followed through the papers. By these he learned that everything
had worked out as he hoped, that his crime was
unsuspected and the public interest centered on the chase. For Barker.
All that now remained to complete his enterprise was to
get Carol. That his continued success must have given him

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an almost insane confidence is proved by the way he
went about this last and most difficult step. Criminals all
slip up somewhere. He had attended to the details of
the murder with amazing skill and thoroughness. It was in
his estimate of the character of Carol that he showed
that blind spot in the brain they all have. The

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only way to explain it is that he was so
sure of his own powers, so confident that she was
heart whole and would be unable to resist the temptations
of his enormous wealth, that he took the final RISI
sent for her in Barker's name. Her response to his
first summons encouraged him. When she didn't come, he had
many reasons with which to wooy himself up, fears, illness,

(33:12):
the impossibility of leaving her mother, but it made him
more cautious, and he didn't venture again till the hue
and cry for Barker had subsided and he had made
a move to the last port of call on the
Saint Lawrence. That he had expected to take her by storm,
win her consent, and leave her no time to deliberate
was proved by the fact quote unquote Henry Santley had

(33:34):
engaged the accommodations for himself and his quote unquote sister
on the Megantic sailing from Quebec at ten the next morning.
What had he intended to say to her? How was
he going to explain? If he had not mentioned it
in his statement, we never would have known, for Carol
did not give him time to tell. The story was simple,

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and in the face of her supposed ignorance of the murder,
might have satisfied her. He was going to admit his
duplicity in the copper Pool, his excuse being he had
done it for her in his last interview with Barker.
He saw that discovery was imminent and decided to drop
out of sight when he passed through his own office.
He was on his way out of the building, descending

(34:16):
unseen by the stairs and going immediately to Canada. When
he read in the papers of the suicide identified as
Halling's Harland, no one was more surprised than he was.
How the mistake had been made, He readily guessed. Some
months before he had discharged one of his clerks for intemperance.
The man, unable to get another job, and in the

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clutch of his vice, had gone to the dogs. Applying
frequently to Harland for help. The lawyer, moved to pity,
had given this in the form of clothing and money.
On the afternoon of January fifteenth, he had visited the
Harland offices in a suit of Harland's clothes, begging for
money and threatening suicide. He was sunk to the lowest

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depths of degradation, for during the few moments when he
was alone in the private office, he had evidently searched
among his employer's papers and taken a watch and chain
which was lying on the desk to be sent to
the jewelers for repairs. Startled in his hunt among the papers,
he had had no time to replace them, and had
put them in his pocket. After the man had gone,

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Harland noticed the missing documents and jewelry, but in the
stress of his own affairs, paid no attention to the theft.
The next day, when he read of the suicide, he
remembered the man's threat to kill himself and realized he
had done it. Later that afternoon that the body crushed
beyond recognition, had been identified through the clothes, papers, and watches.
Himself he regarded as a lucky chance. Without his intervention,

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a thing had occurred which forever severed him from the
life he wished to be done with. Such was Harland's crime,
as explained in Harland's statement, how we talked it over,
how he mused on the slight happening that had brought
it to life. Light, a child at a window, strange
and wonderful, The hotel noises, the traffic in the street

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faded into the silence of the night, as we sat there, pondering, speculating,
and odd too by this modern fall of Lucifer. End
of chapter twenty